CNN on #TED 2010

"What we're going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system," Gates said in a speech at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. "So we need energy miracles." Gates called climate change the world's most vexing problem, and added that finding a cheap and clean energy source is more important than creating new vaccines and improving farming techniques, causes into which he has invested billion of dollars.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday unveiled updates to its Bing search engine - and they seemed to wow the crowds here at TED. Let me know what you think. Is Bing's "decision engine" making headway on Google - which is still the powerhouse in that market? Google also won some fans here with a Nexus One smartphone demo in which a rep spoke into his phone in English and asked the phone to translate his voice into Spanish. Then the phone spoke for him.

TED2010 conference, in California, features speakers deeply versed in their subjects. Scientist Cheryl Hayashi devotes herself to the many varieties of silk spun by spiders. Christopher "Moot" Poole, who runs 4chan, says Web anonymity promotes honest discourse. William Li says substances in food hold promise of preventing forms of cancer.

"Increasingly the Internet itself, given our reliance on it, is a source of destructive technology. I think we really have to worry about cyber terrorism and cyber crime increasingly. But there's obviously nuclear proliferation and bio-weapons and chemical weapons."But the Web isn't completely bad, he said: "I think it's had two diametrically opposed effects. One effect has been really good. It's created transformation and empowered people and allowed us to debunk bad ideas in a very ... decisive way. It's almost created a cognitive immune system for the planet."

McGonigal, a game designer with the Institute for the Future, and a speaker at this year's TED Conference here in Long Beach, California, says people today spend a collective 3 billion hours per week playing online games. She wants us to play more. To solve all of the world's problems, she says, we must spend seven times that much time with games - a whopping 21 billion hours per week among us all.

That scares Poole, who is now 22 and a college student in New York - although he wouldn’t say where. He is a private person who says he mostly spends his free time online on 4chan and on news sites."If someone called you up on the phone and asked you all of these things [people post online] you'd say 'hell no' and hang up," he said. "But now we're flooding the Internet with information about ourselves and I think that's scary. So I would like to see people push back."

Ojanpera does a lot of work these days with mobile phones in the developing world. In places like rural India or sub-Saharan Africa, phones that cost $20 are better than those that cost $200. That's partly because they're more affordable, but it's also because mobile phone developers in those places there don't create complicated, high-power smartphone apps. They make applications with what they've got: text messages.

When celebrity chef Jamie Oliver sat down for an interview with CNN -- just after giving a speech in which he railed against America's unhealthy food system -- he remarked that he was tired and wished he had a beer.

Outside the main stage, about a half-dozen conference sponsors have set up exhibits. I took a quick tour on Wednesday, the first day of the conference. Here's my take on some of the best ideas I heard floating around the halls here:Data makes you healthy; Entrepreneurs will rebuild Haiti; Pocket ultrasounds; $3 coffee.

After a brainstorming session with participants, the idea of a TED Prize emerged, "a prize that instead of looking back, it looked forward. You brought someone to the conference and instead of just honoring them, you granted them a wish, a chance to make a difference in the world, a wish without restrictions."

Every Tuesday, a different TEDTalk will appear on the CNN.com homepage, along with a follow-up interview or an essay from the speaker on a dedicated TED.com page. It'll be a great chance to hear more from a speaker -- and to help great ideas connect with CNN's massive global audience.